MAD STARS 2026 Day One: When AI Becomes the Question, Not the Answer

BUSAN SOUTH KOREA |August 26, 2026

The global creative and marketing industry converged in Busan today as MAD STARS 2026 officially opened at SIGNIEL BUSAN, bringing together creative leaders, marketers, technologists, agencies, and emerging talent from across the world.

Running from August 26 to 28 under the theme “AMPLIFY,” this year’s festival is exploring how technology can expand the possibilities of creativity while keeping human intelligence, curiosity, and cultural understanding at the heart of communication. The festival is taking place at SIGNIEL BUSAN and across the Haeundae area.

Yet after the first day, one thing is clear: MAD STARS 2026 is not simply asking what artificial intelligence can create. It is asking a more fundamental question what happens to human creativity when technology can create almost anything?

A Festival Shaped by the AI Conversation

AI dominated much of the conversation throughout Day One.

The opening conference featured a special conversation with members of the Executive Jury, including Anny Havercroft, Global Head of Product MarComs at TikTok; Aurora Straton, Creative Lead at Google; Raja Rajamannar, Senior Fellow and former Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at Mastercard; Sandipan Bhattacharyya, Chief Creative Officer at MONKS; and Tara McKenty, Chief Creative Officer at AKQA.

The discussion was followed by sessions addressing some of the industry's most pressing questions: why AI marketing fails to deliver, whether ethical AI is possible, how curiosity drives creativity, how brands can create lasting value beyond AI, why human creativity remains essential, and where brands should position themselves amid the rapid growth of AI-generated video.

The concentration of these conversations within a single opening day reflects a broader transformation taking place across the industry. AI is no longer simply a technology trend being observed by marketers and creatives. It is becoming part of the creative process itself.

From Talking About AI to Building With It

MAD STARS is also putting AI into practice within the festival itself.

As a pilot initiative ahead of its 20th anniversary, the festival has introduced an AI-powered multilingual translation system for the Professional Division finalist exhibition. The system can translate text embedded in images, spoken content in videos, and entry information into eight languages: Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese, and Tagalog.

Multilingual simultaneous interpretation is also available during conference sessions, making the festival more accessible to its international audience.

More significantly, the festival has introduced “Use of AI” as a new sub-category within the Craft Section. Entrants are now required to disclose whether AI technologies were used during the production of their submitted work.

That decision signals an important shift: AI is no longer simply something the creative industry debates. It is becoming something the industry must understand, disclose, evaluate, and define standards around.

The Human Question Behind the Technology

For all the attention given to AI, Day One repeatedly returned to distinctly human qualities.

Among the sessions was “The Power of Curiosity,” presented by Nkanyezi Masango, Chief Creative Officer of Ogilvy South Africa. Other sessions explored creating lasting value beyond AI and why AI still needs human creativity.

This tension sits at the centre of MAD STARS 2026's AMPLIFY theme.

The idea is not simply to make technology more powerful. It is to use technology to amplify human capability allowing creativity, ideas, and imagination to travel further and create greater impact.

In that sense, the festival's central debate is shifting from human versus machine to something more productive:

How can humans and machines create something neither could create alone?

Marketing's Next Frontier

One of the most anticipated voices at this year's festival is Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard's Senior Fellow and former Chief Marketing & Communications Officer.

A globally recognized marketing leader with more than three decades of experience, Rajamannar is known for driving Mastercard's brand transformation and evolving its iconic Priceless platform. On August 27, he will deliver a keynote titled “The Next Frontier of Marketing,” exploring a new paradigm in which technology and human-centered creativity converge to amplify brand impact.

His presence is particularly relevant to this year's conversations because the question facing marketers is no longer whether technology will transform the industry. It already has.

The question now is how marketers can use that transformation to build brands that remain meaningful to people.

A Global Jury Looking at Creativity From Every Angle

The scale of MAD STARS 2026 is reflected in its judging structure.

This year, the festival has brought together 313 preliminary jurors from 83 locations and 43 final jurors from 28 locations. The Professional Division is structured across two major groups, 25 Stars, and 442 categories.The Final Jury includes senior creative and marketing leaders from organizations including Mastercard, VML, Publicis, Innocean, Dentsu, Ogilvy, AKQA, TikTok, Google, and others. Among them is Enkhbayasgalan Tungalag, CEO of KMG Group, representing Mongolia on the global jury.

For a regional industry increasingly shaped by global platforms and technology, this diversity of perspectives matters. Creative excellence is no longer judged through a single cultural lens.

What Does This Mean for Smaller Markets?

Perhaps one of the most relevant questions emerging from Day One is what all of this means for markets outside the traditional global creative centres.

For countries such as Mongolia, the conversation around AI can sometimes feel like a race to catch up with larger markets. But MAD STARS suggests another possibility.

As technology becomes increasingly accessible, technology itself may become less of a competitive advantage.

What becomes harder to replicate is cultural understanding. Human insight. Local context. A distinctive point of view.

In a world where anyone can potentially generate an image, a video, a piece of music, or an entire campaign with AI, the value may increasingly lie in knowing what should be created, why it matters, and who it matters to.

That is where smaller markets can have an unexpected advantage: their stories, cultures, and perspectives are inherently specific.

Day One Leaves One Question Behind

After the first day of MAD STARS 2026, the industry's relationship with AI appears less like a technological revolution and more like a creative negotiation.

AI can generate faster.

It can automate.

It can translate.

It can expand production possibilities.

But it cannot remove the fundamental responsibility of the creative industry: deciding what is worth creating in the first place.

And perhaps that is the real meaning of AMPLIFY.

The future of creativity may not belong to those who use the most technology.

It may belong to those who know how to use technology to make human ideas matter more.

MAD STARS 2026 continues through August 28, with further keynote sessions, creative intelligence discussions, jury conversations, exhibitions, networking events, and the final awards programme still to come.